I'm very excited to share the news that Production Premium CS6 will be revealed at NAB next week, but even better, I get to share details about Audition CS6 with everyone right away. More detailed information about some of the new features will be released on the Audition Inside Sound blog this week, but I'l be happy to discuss specifics about the new features on this message thread.

Here's a quick list of the new features and functionality:

Audition CS6 Highlights:

Real-time and rendered clip stretching in multi-track - including new “varispeed” mode

Clip Grouping – Including suspend, trimming, & stretching of groups

VST3 support (Mac and Win) and more effects

New pitch correction/manipulation tools

Automatic speech alignment tool

Red Book Audio CD burning

Hardware controllers support - Including native Avid EUCON and Mackie MCU support

Sounds dream like. Will MIDI be also supported so we can use midi controllers for more comfortable mixing?

Are you referring to control surfaces/hardware like Mackie, FaderPort, and the like (flying faders, transport control, etc)? If so, then yes, some of those controllers piggy back on the MIDI protocol for interfacing and control. We support the same controllers Audition 3 had (which was largely Mackie MCU protocol based and used by many 3rd party controllers). We have also added native Avid EUCON protocol in order to support the Avid Artist series controllers (aka Euphonix).

Great job, very nice to see the new features and the "old" ones finally restored!

What I don't see here is "Rejoining split clips" and the possibility to open the previous ".ses" files. Considering there's a "nearly" in the list of the new features, will there be something else near to what I mentioned above? It would be amazing

Considering there's a "nearly" in the list of the new features, will there be something else near to what I mentioned above? It would be amazing

Ah, this list Durin gives is pretty much complete, I wrote "nearly" in my type up just in case I accidentally missed something small. We fixed/tweaked quite a few very small things (to some these will really matter for their workflow). The bulk of it is listed above or on the blog, especially the large features. For example, as I'm typing this I just realized a small change that i need to add to the blog post list, which is "restricting the X or Y movement of the mouse in spectral using a modifier key when performing a selection", small change but for anyone doing lots of restoration work, it makes linear selections far easier.

There is obviously a lot of totally new stuff that isn't relevant to conversion but looking at the list there is probably a couple of things we can add like (and I'm guessing here) group clips, notch filter fx, clip stretch and maybe more.

I thought I saw what looked like a metronome icon (similar to the one in Reaper) in the sneak peak video but I didn't see it mentioned in Colin's list.

The main list has been updated to reflect the missed items, and I reserve the right to continue updating it with other features we might have overlooked when posting!

The metronome in CS6 is really nice. It's a unique track that can be treated like any audio track. You can edit the pattern, route the output through sends and buses, record automation for cases where you might only want a lead-in, run effects on it if that floats your boat. You can even include it in your mixdown if you wish.

I'll be adding some posts today and tomorrow showing off some of the new stuff. Feel free to make requests so I don't have to make the hard decisions about what to share first.

MIDI Sequencing and VSTi support is not available in Audition CS6. There was a lot of primary feature development this cycle, and I would not have wanted to make the compromises to a MIDI environment that would have been necessary to squeeze it in this cycle.

MIDI composition support remains in our feature backlog and is considered for each release, but there are several reasons it doesn't typically bubble up higher in priority. Audition and Cool Edit always shined as audio editing tools, and this has always been the focus of the team with MIDI support sort of an afterthought, but never our core competency. With Audition 3, we built a basic MIDI Sequencer with VSTi support, but ran into some implementation speed bumps when plugging it into the existing playback engine that resulted in a less-than-great experience in my opinion. It functioned, but I've never felt it held up to the other areas of Audition in terms of usability and simplicity.

I know there are those on the team - myself included - that would love to develop a full MIDI environment, and while it's never been a highly-demanded feature, I know plenty of users would like a basic composition workflow in Audition as well. If we tackle this, I would hope we can take the time and resources to design a very competent interface that you enjoy using, and not just build something as a check mark on a feature list. We can start a separate thread on this, perhaps in the Feature Request forum, and discuss in detail what sort of functionality and tools you would like to see in Audition to support MIDI and virtual instruments.

ReWire support has also not been implemented for Audition CS at this time.

Adobe has historically always offered a free upgrade grace period when you purchase the current version close to the announcement (or in this case, the reveal) of the next release. If you purchase Audition CS 5.5 now, you'll be eligible for a free upgrade to CS6 when released. I believe this only applies to purchases made directly from Adobe (via the adobe.com online store or telephone sales) and will provide you with the downloadable installer for CS6 when released.

For CS 5.5 I had reported two Edit-view related display bugs (spectral display "dB range" value not saved properly, spectral drawing hick-ups when switching between files). Also, compared to Audition 1.x I noticed a slower live-update of the Frequency Analysis window (i.e. less updates per second) when playing a file. Does this mean all three issues have been solved in the course of implementing the above 3 bullet points?

Edit: You wrote, "I'll be adding some posts ... showing off some of the new stuff. Feel free to make requests so I don't have to make the hard decisions about what to share first." => I'd like to see the new spectral display preferences, please

I've read over the new features, and in terms of the automation, there is one question I don't see specifically answered. Will I be able to record surround-sound panning moves in real time in CS6? It's always been a pain to move sounds in a circle up until now.

And I take it that CS6 will still be a 32-bit program? I was hoping that applying effects to large files (noise reduction, for example) would be speedier.

Scripts as they were in Au3 have not returned. The Favorites tool allows you to record processes and actions and performs much of what Scripts allowed, but obviously there was a level of detail Scripting offered - if you were able to learn the, uh, nuances of the language - that Favorites doesn't yet accomplish. I believe we'll continue to make Favorites more powerful, but I also hope we can implement and expose a comprehensive scripting layer as well.

Hmm...this is going to be something that I am going to have to look very hard it. I've held on to 2.0 for so long because each upgrade (with the notable exception of 5.5) was only a small upgrade not worthy of the price.

Will I be able to record surround-sound panning moves in real time in CS6? It's always been a pain to move sounds in a circle up until now.

You can record surround pan automation by setting the track to Write, Touch, or Latch mode and either adjusting positioning in the Surround Panner Panel, adjusting the puck in the track panel mini-panner view, or via hardware controllers like the Avid Artist MC Control.

I have been hoping for session templates since before I could spell the word!

This is going to save so much time especially when I have a full band in doing bed tracks for an album and I have set up a a complex headphone mix for the first track - no more dodgy workarounds - woo hoo!.

Outside his office you will find that another guy is already there with big words of MIDI and REWIRE

Complete waste of time. If you want to compete with music software, then you have to add all of the other bits and pieces that music software has - like notation facilities and grids where you really don't need them, etc. And then you're in direct competition with a load of mature software that already exists to fill this need - you'd always be playing catch-up. And you've needlessly cluttered up the interface. But more significantly, you've provided facilities that the vast majority of your proven market has no need or desire for. If the big players did need this sort of stuff, then it would be there. I think you'll find that most of them actively don't want music software, and would rather Adobe added facilities that they do want.

If you want to compete with music software, then you have to add all of the other bits and pieces that music software has - like notation facilities and grids where you really don't need them, etc. And then you're in direct competition with a load of mature software that already exists to fill this need - you'd always be playing catch-up.